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Three Common Ways to Connect to a Database with PHP

gitbox 2025-06-12

Three Common Ways to Connect to a Database with PHP

When developing web applications, connecting to a database is an essential step. PHP, being a powerful programming language, offers various methods to connect to a database. In this article, we will introduce three common PHP database connection methods: MySQL connection, PDO connection, and MySQLi connection.

1. MySQL Connection

MySQL connection is a traditional method of connecting to a database in PHP, suitable for simple database operations. This method requires providing connection parameters such as the database server address, username, password, and database name.

Here is an example of a simple MySQL connection code:

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "123456";
$dbname = "myDB";

Next, we can establish a connection using the `mysqli_connect()` function:

$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

Once connected, we can execute SQL queries using `mysqli_query()` and fetch results with `mysqli_fetch_assoc()`:

$query = "SELECT * FROM customers";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $query);
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // Process query results
}

2. PDO Connection

PDO (PHP Data Objects) is another common way to connect to a database in PHP. It is an object-oriented database extension that provides a unified API for multiple database systems.

To use PDO for database connection, we need to specify the database driver and connection parameters:

$dsn = "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=myDB";
$username = "root";
$password = "123456";

Then, we can instantiate a PDO object to connect to the database:

try {
    $conn = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password);
    $query = "SELECT * FROM customers";
    $result = $conn->query($query);
    foreach ($result as $row) {
        // Process query results
    }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    // Handle exceptions
}

3. MySQLi Connection

MySQLi is an improved version of the MySQL extension. It supports both object-oriented and procedural programming interfaces and provides more features and capabilities than the traditional MySQL connection method.

To use MySQLi for connecting to the database, we need to specify the database server, username, password, and database name:

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "123456";
$dbname = "myDB";

Then, we can establish a connection using the MySQLi class:

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
$query = "SELECT * FROM customers";
$result = $conn->query($query);
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    // Process query results
}

Summary

This article covered three common PHP database connection methods: MySQL connection, PDO connection, and MySQLi connection. Each method has its own advantages and use cases. Developers can choose the most appropriate method based on their project requirements. Whether you use the traditional MySQL connection, the more flexible PDO, or the enhanced MySQLi, all these methods make it easy to interact with databases in web applications.

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